


Lizbob Supernatural Meta (season 7)

by lizbobjones



Series: Lizbob Supernatural Meta Collection [9]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Meta, Meta Essay, Non Fiction, archived from elizabethrobertajones blog
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 12:24:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16953969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbobjones/pseuds/lizbobjones





	1. You’re Just Playing Sorry

> “You realise you just broke God’s word.”

This scene starts on a great note. My general response to every line and action from this scene is “that’s got to be a metaphor.” In this case, we’re taking the entire conversation as a metaphor for Dean and Cas’s broken relationship, and this is how it starts: Cas broke God’s word. He rebelled against Heaven and the apocalypse arc is all about tearing up God’s script and picking free will. So one line into the conversation, and we’ve got the base of their relationship established; this was how they met, how they became friends, how, in the end, they were ultimately torn apart, when you factor in 6x20’s exploration of the knock on effects of tearing up the script. It’s all key Cas stuff, and in this case, Cas playing rough with the Leviathan tablet is a metaphor for all of that.

Cas just looks kinda sad, and Dean does his first step-back-and-try-again and sits down, backing off from the accusation and opening up the conversation properly.

The important thing here, by the way, is that Dean is seeking an apology for season 6, while Cas desperately wants to give it, and Dean is in no place to accept it, and Cas is in no place to meaningfully give it.

(I rambled a lot about the actual [path to forgiveness](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/98410596963/campchitaquamemories-elizabethrobertajones) the show took, aka, how to  _not_  make season 8 entirely an endless loop of this scene over and over when it comes to their relationship, basically arguing Purgatory cleared the slate. If that’s the case this scene is setting up what needs clearing.)

Anyway.

> “It’s Sam’s thing, isn’t it? You, uh, taking on his cage match scars. I’m guessing that’s what broke your bank, right?”  
> “Well, it took everything to get me here.”  
> “What are you talking about, man?”  
> “Dean. I know you want different answers.”

Dean actually does know exactly how Cas ended up where and how he is - he wasn’t exactly absent in 7x17 when Cas cured Sam and they had to leave him behind with Meg. He knows that taking on the hell stuff from Sam incapacitated Cas completely. Him asking “how” seems to be a redundant question even for Dean.

Fortunately Cas isn’t answering Dean’s questions: his response doesn’t correspond with Dean’s question at all, and he then explicitly says,  _you want different answers_. Assume Cas is answering what Dean wants in the subtext.

So what does “Well it took everything to get me here” mean?

Dean’s first question is saying “Look at what’s wrong with you, Cas” without asking. Rather than get to the hard subject, and asks the redundant but actually less painful question than approaching Cas head on. It also serves as another plot reminder - Cas saved Sam, for Dean. One of the last things Cas said before the Leviathans was about finding some way to redeem himself to Dean, and the Sam thing was it. There’s a lot else going on that needs forgiveness, but for Dean, hurting Sam is the most unforgivable thing, and even then he’s already given and giving Cas second chances no one else would get. Cas taking on the full brunt of Sam’s pain himself, literally shifting the problem back to its source, and Dean facing that, is him asking by way of the obvious, “This is what you did to yourself for me to fix the Sam thing.”

“It took everything to get me here,” is probably in reference to all the factors that led to Cas nearly being back on the path to forgiveness. Factors mostly including Sam’s appeal to Cas to come back and let them fix it, the involvement of Death in setting things up so Cas could try and let go of the Purgatory souls, as well as all the stuff between Dean and Cas from 6x20 onwards where Dean appeals to Cas, then Cas’s death, resurrection, and Dean once again finding Cas and bringing him to Sam. Each event is against all odds but was Sam or Dean or both working to try and draw Cas back for the sake of their friend (and with some help from Bobby :3), and this is Cas appreciating that they made this effort for him - probably an important part of his decision to take on the scars.

So that part of the exchange is basically “Look what you’ve done to yourself [for me to fix Sam].” “Yes but it was done to redeem myself to you.”

On with the conversation:

> “No, I want you to button up your coat and help us take down Leviathans.”

Hah, coats. Ha. Destiel. Ha ha ha. Season 7. Ha.

Okay, Dean-keeping-the-trenchcoat aside, Cas’s coat is sort of symbolic from his de-coating at the beginning of season 7 onwards of Cas’s state. Dean keeps it in remembrance of Cas; giving it back to Cas after his coat-less Emmanuel phase goes along with Cas’s memory coming back. They keep using the metaphor consistently after this - season 8, Cas recreates his old outfit to show he’s back to himself (much appreciated by Dean), season 9 he loses the coat when he becomes human, gets a replacement coat that’s different with the stolen grace (and as that fades out at the beginning of season 10 you see him take the coat on and off in much the way we see his grace flickering as he tries to heal himself). Here, we’re in early days of Coat Metaphor, but it’s got to come from somewhere. :P How about Dean asking Cas to button up his coat - become normal angel Cas that he once knew, who’s a useful friend who can fight beside him.

Leviathans were always metaphorical monsters; obviously the blatant plot thing was as a metaphor for corporate greed and all that jazz, but on a personal level they were a metaphor for the depression and helplessness that they went through in this season. So Dean asking Cas to come help him defeat the metaphor-villains of the seasons with him is a pretty straightforward metaphor for their reconciliation making them happier I think.

> *long helpless stare from Cas*  
> “Do you remember what you did?”  
> *longer, more helpless stare*

And Cas reaches for the “Sorry!” board.

Cas does remember, and being prompted about that leads him to try and make his apology. He can’t say it with his own words because he still hasn’t reached that point, but he  _wants_  this to be over, and he wants to make things better to Dean, and his remorse is evident. But he can’t fully mean it like this. _  
_

And so he wordlessly holds up the boardgame, hoping it can convey it for him when he can’t. Which, obviously, is not the proper way to offer an apology.

Cas sets the boardgame up with magic, trying to rush into the apology by not taking the time to open the board, lay out all the pieces, etc (just like how in this conversation they’re not saying a LOT of stuff: they’re not laying all the cards on the table). Instead he dumps it all on there ready to go and expects the Sorry! to happen like this. 

> “Do you want to go first?”

Of course it takes two to play Sorry!: Dean doesn’t just have to acknowledge Cas’s reasons to apologise, but while he didn’t exactly break the universe as per Cas in season 6, their personal relationship was terrible for the entire season, even before Dean found out about the betrayal. Mommy Dearest has multiple moments where Dean demeans Cas, and right up to Cas’s death, Dean keeps on calling him a child. There’s other stuff from Cas’s side suggested especially in 6x20: Cas felt like Dean could have extended him some trust over his plan, and while, you know, terrible idea, Cas’s fault over much of it, blah blah, he’s still personally feeling like Dean didn’t trust him as part of the problem and we can’t invalidate how he feels even if we don’t fully support what Cas did and he himself acknowledged his faults in going along with the plan.

Last time Cas and Dean talked (that one other time Cas was just Cas in season 7) Cas said, “We didn’t part friends, Dean.” Asking Dean to go first is suggesting there are things he could say - smaller things than what Cas might, perhaps, but things which are still about the cornerstones of their friendship regarding trust and how Dean sees and treats Cas, which they could smooth over.

This is the first part of their conversation, and has basically set up all the groundwork for what lies between them and that “Sorry!”

We cut back to Cas and Dean after a brief bit with Kevin fixing the tablet (probably not symbolic down to this scene…) and they’re clearly a few rounds into the game now. The scene starts with Dean holding up a tiny “Sorry!” card, and then grudgingly moving his piece back a few steps (assuming normal boardgame conventions where you move left-right as if reading as default movement order). It seems like this conversation is going well. :P

Cas is talking Neanderthals and poetry, musing on the chance that humans won. I’m not 100% on the metaphors here, except that it is showing Cas’s age and appreciation for small, wonderful things in the world. He’s enamoured with creation, and his words about how it was modern humans who won and “ate the apple, invented pants…” bringing it back around to the Biblical story of how humanity got its apparent kickstart, and, again, sort of leads back to where they are: if Swan Song was the end of the script, Adam and Eve is the start of it: the beginning of the story. The context is pretty huge here, at least as far as Cas’s issues run. Him reflecting on ancient history and pre-history is a sign of how huge and abstract his history is, leaving you looking at the guy in front of Dean and… Yeah, long road. Faint whispers of 6x20 and Cas telling you his story again.

> “Cas, where can we find this, uh, Metatron? Is he still alive?“   
> “I’m sorry, I think you have to go back to start.”  
> *Dean scowls, resentfully moves his piece back*  
> “This is important.”  
> *Cas just gestures the boardgame again*  
> *Dean angrily makes another move*

Dean tries too hard to press Cas for current plot information, clearly fed up of playing this game, but Cas still wants to work on the apology, and so he tells Dean that he’s got to try harder and work through Sorry! before they can talk about anything else.

Here’s a great line from Dean:

> “I think Metatron could stop a lot of bad. You understand that?”  
> “We live in a ‘Sorry’ universe.” (Cas gestures with a Sorry! card as he says the word). “It’s engineered to create conflict. I mean, why should I prosper from your misfortune?”  
> *Cas does a move which puts the last of Dean’s pieces back to start since he’s been busy sucking at Sorry! while trying to talk to Cas*  
> “But these are the rules, I didn’t make them.”

Possibly some of this is largely to suggest that the boardgame has been a metaphor all along (gasp!). Cas, as per the rest of this season, is avoiding conflict, and here he lays out his current philosophy on why he’s not fighting. It’s existential and a sort of defeat that comes from knowing, as this conversation reminds us, how the universe works on every level. Cas has seen it all and he knows how it goes and right now that’s got him completely beaten down, and not inclined to do anything about it when Dean comes to him with another problem.

Anyway Dean is finally going to start to address some of his issues with Cas and starts to get openly angry at last:

> “You made some of them. When you tried to become God. When you cut that hole into that wall.”  
> “Dean… It’s your move.”  
> “Screw the damn game!”  
> *Dean throws the board on the floor and slams his hand on the table*

I should note that basically we see Cas move once while making his symbolic point to about 3 or so moves from Dean: Cas is moving off screen and it’s not really been about his moves at this point while Dean is the one trying to control the conversation. Once Dean reaches the point in the conversation where they’re talking for the first time about the deep hurt between them - the stuff that really needs the genuine apology, Cas’s avoidance of it and the fact that he’s not participating, using the Sorry! game as a cover for his actual apology, becomes all that more clear, and Dean is having none of it now it’s turned serious.

They’ve held pretty level eye contact through this (Cas’s is so consistent it’s hard to tell when it’s been his turn in the game) but now he looks down at his lap and can’t even try to raise his head.

> Dean tries to calm himself, and says, “Forget the game, Cas.”  
> Cas looks up. “I’m sorry Dean.”  
> “No. You’re  _playing_  ’Sorry’.”

Which, uh, it’s sort of hard to tell where the metaphor ends there. :P *she jokes because the other option is crying and this line, everything about it, is the reason this is my favourite scene in the entire run of the show*

Dean sounds on the very of angry tears here - he’s choked up and furious and miserable and uurgh I hate this scene. This is where Dean realises that Cas can’t apologise, not in the way Dean wants him to. Not in the meaningful way. I think he was going to give him a chance to apologise, and hear it, but Cas refusing to help, and only wanting to play the boardgame, makes Dean realise how out of it Cas is - and how anything he says right now can’t be taken as fully sincere, as right now Dean realises this isn’t his Cas - his expression is one of searching over Cas’s face, trying to understand him, and realising he doesn’t see Cas there, not the one he used to rely on. Not the one he wants to hear making the apology. It takes him the rest of the season to reconcile this, and only then does he actually get his Cas back, and even inspire this Cas to fight alongside him again.

(brief cut to Kevin and Sam where the angels show up)

Then we get the bit where Cas is on the floor clearing up the game, and Dean is sitting watching him and scowling hard enough to set Cas on fire.

 

Cas trying to clear up the mess of the game is symbolic of a lot of pointless tidying - the effect the game apology has is pointless clearing up. Saying sorry over and over but it not meaning anything, not in the way it’s supposed to. The dynamic puts Cas in a deeply subservient position with Dean judging him, and it’s here we can see clearer than in the previous parts that a great deal of the problem here is that Dean’s got a huge wall up that the sorrys are bouncing off: he himself is not ready yet to hear the words Cas has to say: he is as removed from being able to accept the apology as if Cas were his normal self and offering it whole-heartedly. The complete failure to work the situation out results in this: the game thrown on the floor, communication broken down, and Dean sulking and angry, Cas scrabbling to make it right in too-small gestures that don’t measure up to the weight of the situation.

From this the scene ends with the mood breaking into something tragic in an entirely different way as Cas gets excited about the arrival of the angels.


	2. The Solidarity Sandwich

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> Looking at one of the only gifsets from s7 that didn't break my heart, the one with Dean adorably high on his burger, made me realise it's actually 1 of the saddest moments?? B/c here is a Dean that after all this time of trying desperately to numb himself 2 the pain of what Cas did & his death, of drinking himself 2 sleep & waking up in a sweat, of trying a one-night stand w/ disastrous consequences, not being able to forget w/e he did, finally finds relief & feels at ease? How badly he must've

> craved that food after he realised what had happened and what the effects were like. It almost seems glaring now how we were shown how ineffective & destructive his coping methods were, and how easily he achieved a blissful state of detachment & peace with a few bites of a burger. Yet he had to give it up as soon as he felt it (makes Cas whipping up a sandwich he could eat 4 him even more poignant).  **I’ve been compromised by a couple of gifs of a sagging sandwich, this is such bullshit! ;((**
> 
>  
> 
> * * *
> 
> ****

Quote of the week there. 

_I never connected the wholesome sandwich Cas makes to this_.

Cas makes both Sam and Dean the sandwich, but Dean’s the one with the complicated history with a sandwich/Cas, tied up to his happiness with this false sense of euphoria the drugged sandwich gave him that, like you say, proved to ultimately be a false release from the pain along with every other coping method he tried. Then Cas comes along with his perfect, healthy, presumably delicious sandwich, and plonks it right into Dean’s hands, just like how after Dean hit the lowest point of the season with  _not Bobby too_ , Cas was plonked right back into his life and the struggle for forgiveness began. If the Turducken sandwich was the sandwich of despair, Cas’s sandwiches are the sandwiches of hope (that season 7 is almost over. I kid, I kid.)

Cas himself links the sandwich to solidarity, and the ham with comfort before death - the last point really important for their conversation beside Baby near the end of the episode considering they’re talking about taking on Dick like a suicide mission. Anyway, Dean takes the sandwich confused but without a fight, subconsciously accepting room to forgive Cas before he’s able to say anything to that effect, while Cas continues to wave the one he made for Sam around and Sam doesn’t actually take it on screen, meaning the visual link stays with Dean and Cas both holding the comfort sandwich. :P Even though Jensen is fine with stuffing his face on camera, Dean doesn’t eat any sandwich in front of Cas either: he accepts the gesture of solidarity, but we don’t see him actually drawing the comfort from it that he needs to, or therefore repaying Cas with the emotional intent of the sandwich. You can lead the horse to water, etc. He’s still not all the way towards forgiving Cas, though this is the episode where it will eventually happen and all this is subtext building towards that.

Then in the next scene with the sandwiches (Cas really got into making them?? I admit I was not expecting to see actual sandwiches again as it was blink-and-you-miss-it, and only skipped to this part for plate meta) he once again waves one sandwich at Sam and is ignored completely (Sam and Cas are assumed to be reasonably good from the moment Cas heals Sam, especially for the purposes of this meta, since Sam not taking the sandwich-of-please-forgive-me suggests he doesn’t think there’s anything between them that requires an emotional relationship-fixing sandwich and a serious subplot of this episode is Cas and Dean making up). Anyway, Cas hands the other sandwich to Dean and he immediately takes it but again doesn’t eat any on screen. 

I know there’s a thing where Sam doesn’t ever seem to eat on screen but he could have at least taken it to show he intended to eat it - there’s plenty of ways to imply that rather than have Sam twice brush off even taking the sandwich (it’s Dean and Cas’s thing - despite being offered a sandwich, this isn’t about Sam, and the link back to the turducken slammer explains how this is - sandwich subtext is connected to Dean only by that scene, in just the same way we say Dean gets all the queer subtext and it slips past Sam). 

Clearly they did eat the last sandwiches, since Cas has apparently got an endless source of blue plates as the new sandwiches are on more, and he’s wiping one plate down at the point when Dean snaps and yells at him that no one cares that he’s broken (spoiler alert: Dean cares). (PS: don’t re-watch this bit and notice the helpless wobble in Cas’s voice when he says “I destroyed everything”. BLARGH) Anyway like with the boardgame conversation with Cas and Dean earlier that season there’s a weird extra level to what Cas is doing in the background: when Dean tells him to “clean up your mess” Cas is in fact attempting to do the dishes and specifically holding the plate from one of the sandwiches from earlier (I headcanon Dean’s for neat emotional narrative though there is literally no way to prove that since there are 2 blue plates in the sink. :P). He is trying, as he suggests when he first shows up with sandwiches, to offer solidarity and comfort: to clean up some of the emotional mess he caused. His link between the sandwiches and emotional comfort and cleaning (dishes he caused that need washing) shows the level to which he’s trying. It’s not good enough for Dean, but it’s what Cas thinks he can offer at that point.

Just to drive the point home, Cas flaps off after Dean yells at him to get the Twister game, a callback to the boardgame conversation, which was largely used to illustrate Dean fucking up talking to Cas properly by always saying the wrong thing and being made to move back to the start every time he tried. All the progress suggested by the sandwiches is obliterated. When Dean approaches Cas *finally* with the correct way to go about the situation, and leads them into the conversation that will actually end with forgiveness, emotional honesty, and earning Cas’s help and even action from the recently sworn pacifist, just to drive the point home Cas is playing one last boardgame, but this time Dean plays the game right and doesn’t say or do anything that would cause him to go back a few steps.


	3. Cas Being Ready For Forgiveness

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> I'm still so pissed at Cas for Bobby's death! It's Cas's fault that Bobby is dead, not to mention he KILLED SO MANY PEOPLE after he ignored Dean telling him not to break open purgatory.

* * *

 

Setting aside that Bobby was totally cool with Cas in 10x17 so obviously NO HARD FEELINGS let me talk to you about one of the most beautiful silent moments in the [show, in 7x23](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/114212273403/bioluminosity-this-looks-like-a-legit-scene), when Cas was sitting on the stairs watching Bobby's funeral:

  


Because our tragic little cupcake of the Lord thinks  _exactly the same thing_  about himself. 

That gif is from Bobby’s moving on scene, and the whole thing is shot between the brothers and Bobby saying goodbye, and then at the very end of the scene the camera pans around unexpectedly, and makes the last moment of the scene a dramatic sad music upsurge reveal about  _Cas_ sitting in on it. The moment was “for” the bros, sure, but the  _point_  was Castiel, because the last moment was focussed on a reveal about him being present too.

Let’s zoom out for some perspective on why that’s a surprise: after they catch Bobby possessing the maid they go back to Rufus’s cabin, and the problem of Bobby and Dick is intertwined:

> MEG  
> Tell me again why you turned tail for some maid. [CASTIEL puts a sandwich in front of DEAN.] You were right there.
> 
> DEAN  
> Shut up, Meg.
> 
> SAM  
> Because Dick made more Dicks. 
> 
> […]
> 
> DEAN  
> You got anything to say on the topic of Dicks? Crowley was pretty sure that you could help.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> I can’t help. You understand? I can’t. I destroyed… everything, and I will destroy everything again. Can we please just leave it at that?
> 
> DEAN  
> No. [He gets up.] No, we can’t. 
> 
> […]
> 
> DEAN  
> We can’t leave it. You let these friggin’ things in. So you don’t get to make a sandwich. You don’t get a damned cat. Nobody cares that you’re broken, Cas. Clean up your mess!
> 
> […]
> 
> MEG  
> Nice. You scared off the Empire’s only hope. 

That famous awful line from Dean about “no one cares that you’re broken” is clearly linked to the Leviathan in general, Dick specifically, and implied that Dean too is linking this to Bobby’s death. Cas nopes out of this conversation to play Twister, rather than face up to Dean’s shouting, and that’s where we leave it with Cas until the farewell to Bobby, the next scene with some sentimental padding between this argument and the burning of the flask. So when the camera swings around to Cas, and shows him sitting there watching as well, it is clearly about him facing that guilt silently in his own way that he can manage at that point. It’s already showing that between these two scenes there was a change in Cas and that he’s working through what Dean yelled at him. It’s an admission of guilt, but in the positive way of leading towards Cas giving in and deciding to help them, and facing his guilt about getting Bobby killed is one of the key steps along the way. 

(Other important steps being him and Dean - he has some words with Sam too but they’ve been square since 7x17 so it’s a different sort of emotional resolution between them not leading towards the plot resolution of the season.) Dean doesn’t  _seem_  to look at Cas at all during Bobby’s send off, but he was presumably aware he was there, because aside from general time to think and gathering some perspective of his own, the next scene immediately after is a time skip to Dean coming up to Cas to ask him to take him to get Baby, which leads to their own personal reconciliation and forgiveness conversation.

So without exchanging any more words between that argument and Dean coming to Cas for the “errand” Dean has also moved into a more forgiving state of mind, and the only difference is that they all attended Bobby’s farewell. Something that Dean blamed Cas for minutes ago in episode time. Meaning, silently, Cas’s presence there did what his conspicuous absence could not: have started building bridges back between them over the damage of the blame of Bobby’s death falling on Cas. It was obvious from the first argument  _this was an issue_  between them, but on the other side of the farewell, Cas has done enough in his own way to open a road to forgiveness.

And, incidentally, would mean that deaths like Bobby’s, with his as the major example of human death toll via Leviathan, would be some of the guilt that would have weighed on Cas and made him choose to stay in Purgatory, to continue living out that penance, in season 8. He carries this guilt an  _incredibly_  long way and season 8 for Cas is just about entirely still motivated by penance, whether towards humanity or Heaven. He doesn’t forget it and whether you think he should be blamed or not, Cas  _does_  and he tries so hard to make up for it.

And Dean forgave him for it within the episode… Basically if you still hold it against him after season 8, you’re just looking for reasons to hate Cas outside of the actual text of the show, which has made him suffer for it, and brought him through the other side. 


End file.
